La paille, 1980

Gilles Aillaud   Master Artists

Gilles Aillaud, born in Paris on June 5, 1928, is a French painter, author and scenographer, son of the architect Émile Aillaud. He is recognized as one of the main representatives of the New Figuration and Narrative Figuration . His favorite theme is the representation of animals within the zoological space.

In 2023, Librairie Métamorphoses presented the exhibition "Le serval et la tortue" from September 28 to November 18, highlighting the entire engraved work of Gilles Aillaud. On this occasion, a catalogue raisonné of his engraved work was published, established by Ianna Andréadis with a text by Jean-Christophe Bailly.

At the same time, the Centre Pompidou has dedicated a retrospective entitled "Animal politique" to Gilles Aillaud, visible from October 4, 2023 to February 26, 2024. This exhibition explores our relationship with living things through the artist's representations of zoological parks.

During the 1950s, Aillaud painted birds and seascapes using collage of heterogeneous materials such as plaster, cotton and wire mesh to represent a bird of prey, or plastic film and glued sand to evoke the sea and the shore. These subjects constitute the bulk of his future iconography.

His first solo exhibition took place at the Niepce gallery in Paris in 1952. For many years, Gilles Aillaud worked in complete isolation.

In 1961 he met Eduardo Arroyo, with whom he shared the same artistic and political views. In 1962 he married Camille Couturier, with whom he had a daughter, Marie Aillaud, in 1965, and a son, Arthur Aillaud, in 1973. In 1964, Gilles Aillaud joined the Committee of the Salon de la Jeune Peinture and became its president a year later.

In his works on paper, Aillaud uses the techniques of lithography and watercolor with great economy of means: a crocodile is suggested by a black line accompanied by rare indications of shadows or reliefs, while lions and monkeys are represented by a few spots of color.